


Material Things

by cupiscent



Category: Muse (Band)
Genre: Genderbending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-11-18 05:16:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18114038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: Matt wakes up a girl, as you do (or as he does, apparently, from time to time); Dom seems to have more trouble dealing with it than Matt does.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Genderbend fic! Beware gender identity stuff if that might be tricky for you. Despite the best of intentions and the help of a wonderfully generous sensitivity reader, there might be sharp edges. If so, I apologise, and if you feel up to it, I would love to hear about the problems so that I can try to do better next time.

**Day 1**

Last night ended far too few hours ago for someone to be fucking shrieking in Dom's bathroom. In theory, he's totally leaping out of bed and dashing to the rescue, but in practice he's flopping a hand over the edge of the bed and turning his face just enough out of the pillow to call, "Matt? Is that you?"

They're really in trouble if it's not, because Dom could've sworn it was only the two of them when he passed out last night.

But the voice from the bathroom is definitely Bellamy, both in volume and timbre. "Fucking Christ in aspic!" He thunders out of the bathroom and down the hall. One of the mysteries of the universe: how such a tiny fucker can consistently generate so much bloody noise.

At least he's gone. Except Dom's barely halfway back to sleep when he starts up in the living room, clearly on the phone, possibly to someone in the wilds of fucking Alaska from the volume that's apparently necessary. Not that Dom can pick out that many individual words, the speed he's going at. Yes again, he says that a few times. "Why else am I calling at six in the fucking morning?"

Fuck, is that the time? Dom hauls himself out from under the pillow enough to shout, "Can you take it fucking outside?"

Elephant-Bellamy thunders down the corridor again, and then someone steps into the doorway of Dom's room. It isn't Matt, it can't be, despite the fact that it's wearing the same boxers he was swanning around in at the tail end of last night, because Matt Bellamy doesn't have breasts, and this person does, there they are, staring at Dom. But her mouth opens and she says, "No I don't fucking think I can," exactly like Matt Bellamy.

"What the fuck?" Dom croaks.

And that's the absolute end of sleeping.

* * *

Not that Dom feels particularly awake, even halfway through a cup of coffee. "What do you mean, it's happened before?" He holds up a hand before Matt can do more than give him that _you're being a fucking moron_ look. "No, I mean, did we just not notice?"

Matt pulls a face. "I was fourteen. It was a lot less obvious then. I was all--" He waves a hand like he's blessing the congregation, but Dom can still hear the _skinny as a stick_. The fingers of Matt's other hand don't let up drumming against the table, next to his phone; his grandmother's going to call him back, apparently. He's on his second cup of tea already and not slowing down any.

"And obviously it--"

"Yeah."

So it's fine. They can do it again, whatever they did last time to turn Matt back. Because it's not just the breasts (which thank _fuck_ he has covered up with a t-shirt), he's the full package, which Dom had been trying to figure out a tactful way to ask about when Matt just about shouted, "Yes, I have a twat," and that was when Dom started making coffee because tea wasn't going to cut it. He seriously considered adding whiskey but turns out they drank it all last night.

The phone rings, and both of them smack their knees on the underside of the table. Matt fumbles and nearly drops the thing, bouncing up from the table even as he lifts it to his ear. He paces away down the corridor, all clipped syllables and hurried, cut-off sentences. Dom can't parse it, not at this hour, not this wound up. He's barely listening, just working his way through his coffee, until Matt's voice--Matt behind it--comes back to the kitchen. Stops in the doorway.

"So you're saying," he says, into the phone but looking right at Dom, "that you have no idea what happened last time, it just went away by itself." It can't be his grandmother, he must be talking to someone else, Dom's never heard Matt speak in that tone to her in his life.

And then he realises what he just heard.

Matt's saying, "Fine" (and also "Yes" and "Bye" and hanging up) and Dom's just staring at him, because surely this is the actual opposite of fine.

"What?" Matt says, and shrugs. "It'll go away. Probably."

"How long?" Dom manages. He's mildly amazed he still knows how words work.

"Eighty-six days, last time." Matt looks down at his phone, and shrugs again. He seems to have... entirely got over it. "Better tell Chris, I guess."

* * *

Chris doesn't stop laughing for five full minutes. Matt puts the phone on speaker after about thirty-five seconds. Dom leaves the kitchen somewhere in the middle, taking his second cup of coffee, and goes to have a shower. He hopes it might help him wake up, or perhaps that when he does wake up it'll turn out that this is all a bizarre dream, which certainly seems more likely than it being reality.

No such luck. He's towelling off, squinting at himself in the half-fogged mirror, when the door opens behind him--no knock of course--and Matt sticks his head in to say, "So how much of a girl am I?"

"Do you mind?" Dom snips, just by reflex.

Same thing surely prompts Matt, phone still held aloft at his shoulder, to shoot back, "What, were you having a wank?"

"I might have been."

"I'm having a fucking crisis and you're going to bash the bishop?"

Dom whirls around--wrapping the towel around his waist before he does, thank you very fucking much, there's only one ridiculous exhibitionist in this band--but Matt still looks outraged when not in reflection. Which is fucking rich. "You've had bigger crises over which jacket to wear."

"OI," Chris says over the phone, loud enough that even Dom can hear.

Matt twitches the phone back to his ear. "Yeah look, I'm--what? No. How should I--? Fine, talk to him yourself."

He hands over the phone, and of course shows no inclination to fuck off even slightly, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed--under his sudden-advent-of-tits. Dom leans back against the sink, trusting his weight against the porcelain to hold the towel in place, because he needs one hand for the phone and one to rub at the sudden headache behind his right eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"You all right, mate?" Chris asks. Dom just grunts, and Chris laughs; it's not as big through the speaker of Matt's phone as having him in the same room, but it still unknits a little of the tension across Dom's shoulders. "This is a whole new level of weird, even for him."

"Tell me about it." Dom glances up from the bathmat at Matt, who's frowning hard as he pulls the neck of his t-shirt all out of whack so he can peer down at his own rack. Dom supposes he can't blame him.

"So look," Chris says, serious now, "I can't trust him to give a straight answer, so I need you to tell me: does he make a hot bird?"

Matt looks up then, like he's heard, which of course he hasn't, but he looks startled--hair sticking up in every direction from sleep and the hands he's been running through it as he paces up and down Dom's corridor on the phone, and his limbs sticking out from slightly-too-big clothes, not as skinny as he was (the last time) but still not exactly hefty. Except now there are curves--slight ones, but there, making the t-shirt drape differently. He looks young, and Dom thinks maybe it's just the big blue eyes and the startled look, then he realises it's that, for the first time in years, Matt doesn't look like he's forgotten to shave. Young. Gawky. Gamine. How does he even know a fucking word like gamine?

"Bout the same, really," Dom says. Clears his throat. Looks back down at the bathmat.

* * *

Here's the problem: Dom's always thought that Matt made a pretty hot bloke to begin with. Not _always_ always, he hasn't been pining for years like a sap or anything, but shortly after the first time they put Matt up on a proper stage he'd thought, yep, he's got something, and that something had just grown, developed, settled over him like a blanket. Become more presence than stage presence and then more than both. It wasn't like Matt didn't have objectively attractive elements, even if he was a little fucking twerp of a man, but somehow the way he put it all together the twerp became the attractive part and the dark and handsome became the well-yes-also.

It wasn't a thing, and Dom hasn't been pining, it's just that sometimes Matt gives that laugh, or tilts his neck just so, or lays those long fucking fingers on an instrument and just _creates_ , and Dom's stomach clenches. It's fine, he can deal, it's just part of life.

Now Dom passes the phone back, saying, "Get the fuck out of my bathroom, pervert," and Matt pulls a face, putting his phone back to his ear just as Chris says something that makes him throw his head back and laugh.

And Dom's stomach clenches.

Matt heads back down the corridor, nattering away as he stretches the other arm up over his head, the t-shirt riding up, showing a strip of pasty English skin above the boxers riding low now on the slight hook of his hips.

Dom slams the bathroom door, rests his forehead against it.

Eighty-six fucking days. Not even three months. It'll be fine.

* * *

**Day 5**

So far as they can tell in the studio, Matt's vocal range hasn't changed at all.

"Which is funny," Chris notes, bouncing someone's abandoned rubberband ball from hand to hand, "because your speaking voice is higher."

"Is it?" Matt looks surprised. "Sounds the same from in here."

"Echoes off the inside of your skull," Dom notes, fiddling with a stray plectrum, turning it over and over in his fingers. He's still having a bit of trouble looking straight at Matt. It's easier to deal with the changes in sidelong, darting glances. Or the lack of changes. He still looks like Matt, exactly like Matt, except when he settles his guitar on his lap it tugs his shirt tight in different ways; the wide collar of it skews sideways and shows the white strap of a bra.

"It fucking what?" He still sounds exactly like Matt as well.

"Never mind." Dom pushes his chair away from the desk. "Are we done?"

Chris shrugs. "We still have a functional singer. Not that it'll matter if you're right about the time--what are you doing?"

Matt's wriggling around on the couch, shifting the guitar on his lap and pulling faces. "You're not going to fucking believe it," he says, "but the tits get in the way."

"Of the guitar?" Dom asks, which is stupid, of course of the bloody guitar. "But… there are hundreds of female guitarists."

"Got any of them on speed dial?" Matt asks. "Maybe I'm doing this wrong." He lays the guitar down across his lap, and just sets hands on his own breasts and hoiks them up. The shirt rucks up, creases into the valley between his tits.

"You do have a rack." Chris sounds surprised. "Couldn't tell before. You should get like one of those push-up bras."

"Fuck off," Matt says, still clutching his chest like he's worried his breasts will escape. "I got this one fitted personally by a lovely bird to flatter but not be pushy."

Chris guffaws, and Dom knows his line here by default: "Since when are you not pushy?" Which is just as well, because his mouth's saying it while his brain is still stuck on the idea of Matt in black lace underthings and stilettos nearly as sharp as the glint in his eye as he--

"Fucking hell." Dom's on his feet without any memory of intending to stand up.

Matt stops mid-exclamation ( _What kind of girl do you take me for?_ ) to stare at him, startled and fucking gamine again. The chair spins around and dings Dom in the back of the knees, and it pushes him into motion, shoving out through the studio door.

He stops in the corridor outside. If he goes any further, there'll be other people, questions about how things have gone, edging around asking why exactly they wanted the studio but insisted on absolutely no one else being around today. Dom leans against the wall and lets his feet slide slowly, squeakily, across the floor until he's sitting. He's still holding the bloody plectrum.

About two seconds later, the door opens and Matt strides out and nearly trips over Dom's legs. "Shit," he yelps, skidding on the polished floor. He's wearing the same stupid fashion nonsense shoes as he always does, because his feet are exactly the same because _nothing has changed_ apparently. Except a few key details.

Matt finds his balance. "I thought you'd…" He trails off.

"Well, I didn't." Dom looks up at Matt, who's looking back at him all warily, and how the fuck is _Dom_ the one getting looked at like that in this whole fucking debacle? He points the plectrum accusingly at Matt. "Are you not at all bothered that you're going to be a woman for eighty-six days?"

"Eighty-one now," Matt corrects, which is actually a little reassuring; Dom isn't the only one counting. He sighs, and hurls himself down on the floor opposite Dom, taking up twice as much space as he should be able to, as always. "Is it weird? Yes. Of course it fucking is. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and freak out that someone's in the bathroom with me. I have to sit down to piss, which is so much weirder than you'd think. These things--" He points at his chest. "--have a bloody mind of their own, it's like they're not even mine, I swear they weren't this bad last time, it was actually sort of a relief not to--anyway." He shrugs, and waves a hand across the hall at Dom. "Aren't you the one was going on about not being too attached to material things?"

"I meant your guitars," Dom says. "Not your genitals." Matt starts giggling, and Dom points at him. "No. There is not a song in that." Matt gives him wide innocent eyes that are no more convincing now than they were before, especially not paired with that smirk. Dom rolls his own eyes. "Fuck it, let's just get ratted."

"Thought you'd never ask." Matt bounces up to his feet, manages to clip Dom's ankle on the way past. "Oi!" he's hollering, swinging around the doorframe. "Wolstenbeast!" Dom pegs the plectrum at his head, but it just bounces off the door and ricochets into the studio.

If he's learned anything from half a life and more with Matt Bellamy, it's that giving in is inevitable.

* * *

They go down the pub, making an effort to find one they at least can't remember going to before. It's basically the same as any other night--Chris nurses a ginger ale for half an hour then goes home; Matt gets in a vehement agreement with the bartender about wine; Dom winds up drinking something random just because the bottle looks interesting (and he doesn't regret it; spiced rum, surprisingly tasty). Basically the same, except around the fourth round, when they usually get kicked out (or decide it's just easier to go back to Dom's), this time it's because some bloke grabs a handful of Bellamy's arse and Matt just about nuts him, has him bailed up against the bar by the time Dom dances through the crowd to haul him back by the collar, wrapping an arm around his waist. "Let's all just--" Dom soothes.

But the bloke interrupts with, "Your bird's a fucking nutter."

"You sodding groped me, fuck-knuckle!" Matt surges against Dom's grip, and he wishes briefly that Chris was still here, because sometimes what you really need is the guy who can just carry Bellamy out of here.

"Pair of dykes," the bloke's mate mutters, and Dom's hauled Matt a couple metres toward the door before he really registers it.

"Oi!" he snarls, turning back, and then it's Matt's hand fisted in the back of his shirt, yanking him out of the pub and into the dark.

* * *

"You know, you sort of do," Dom points out as he opens a new bottle of whiskey. (Of course he got more; his guitarist is now a guitar _ess_... or whatever. Point is: whiskey has become even more of a necessity.)

"Do what?" Matt's voice is muffled by the arm he has thrown over his face where he's sprawled out on Dom's couch with his feet up on the back. The whole pose has hauled his shirt up and his jeans down and Dom deserves some sort of prize for ignoring the svelte sweep of his stomach and the sharp shadows of his hipbones.

Mostly ignoring. Whatever.

He takes a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle, then pours for both of them. "Look like an angry lesbian."

The arm lifts barely enough for Matt to spit, "Fuck off," which is just punctuation for him.

"Which makes sense," Dom ponders, setting the whiskey aside--doesn't even bother putting the lid back on because why waste the effort? "Since you basically are right now. I mean, short hair, sensible shoes, bloke's clothes, _plus_ you have tits and like to shag women."

Matt swings to upright on the couch, scoffing, " _You_ dress more like a lesbian than I d--"

He literally stops mid-word, and when Dom looks up at him, he's got that look on his face. The massive-Tesla-coil-above-the-audience look. The sixteen-part-choral-backing-harmonies look. The shit-Matthew-Bellamy-should-not-be-allowed-to-do-but-probably-will-be look.

"Bloody hell," Dom mutters. "If you're having ideas, I'm drinking your whiskey as well."

"Cunt," Matt says absently, like a reflex; he jumps up to lay hold of one of the glasses, long fingers spider-splayed around the rim. He smirks like a walking bad idea--Dom downs his drink defensively--and says, "I could have lesbian sex." He rolls the word _lesbian_ around his mouth with a relish that would absolutely get him slapped by a good half of the world's population.

It just makes Dom hopelessly turned on, or maybe that's the sudden accompanying onslaught of mental images--Matt and some faceless nubile young lass all gasping and giggling like the ridiculous girl-on-girl interlude in a porn flick. For some reason, what has him reaching for the bottle and sloshing another tot into his glass is the idea of the look of surprise--of _discovery_ \--on Matt's face as he comes meltingly, judderingly, unexpectedly undone...

Dom tosses back his whiskey just as Matt says, "Or sex with a bloke, I guess."

The coughing fit lasts a good six minutes. By the time Dom's finally breathing something like easily again, he's half lying on his kitchen floor, and Matt's moved from helpful but not entirely relevant first-aid advice, through offering Dom other things to drink--or eat--to just plain criticising the contents of Dom's fridge. "Why do you even have three kinds of olives?"

Dom tilts his head back against the cabinets. He should ask. Establish if Matt was even serious. Sometimes he is, sometimes he isn't. Sometimes the answer will be different tomorrow. The problem is, Dom isn't sure what he wants the answer to be. The last thing he needs is another excuse to tie himself in knots.

"Fuck you, olives are delicious," he rasps instead.

* * *

It's stupidly late and they've drunk a lot and not eaten much (except olives; all three kinds) when Matt finally decides he's going back to his. Dom points out he can sleep on the couch; Matt points out that the last time he did that he woke up a woman, so no offense mate, but…

Dom goes down to wait for the cab with him. It's colder than he was expecting; he crosses his arms, shoves hands into his armpits, and Matt just giggles at him. "Go back inside, you fucking big girl's blouse."

"You're the fucking girl," Dom points out, and stays put, jiggling from one foot to the other like it'll help him keep warm. He catches himself wondering if Matt's going to be safe with the cabbie, drunk as he is, and can't quite unthink it, even though he's never wondered it before, and he's put Matt in taxis drunker and in weirder places. Matt doesn't even look that feminine, especially not slouched in his coat.

"It is weird," Matt says, and Dom blinks at him. "This--" Matt waves a hand over his torso like a high-speed metal detector. "It's so fucking weird. I can't do anything, can't reach for a shelf, can't lie in bed--can't even playing the fucking guitar--without things feeling all wrong, and I can't--" His mouth twists, and Dom doesn't think he could interpret what he was seeing on Matt's face even if he was sober. But Matt shakes his head, and says, "But this time it's not as wei--well, no, it's still just as bloody weird. But it's easier to deal with."

"Everything's easier when you're not fourteen," Dom suggests.

"Yeah. And I know it's going to end. And I've got, y'know--" Matt shrugs. "I'm not alone. There's Chris. And you."

Dom's still staring at him, unsure what to say, when the cab sweeps around the corner and nearly blinds him with its headlights.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Girl!Matt takes a holiday to hopefully avoid detection, and pursue some personal goals; Dom's still having trouble dealing with it.

**Day 8**

Chris--often better at being the sensible one, probably all that being-a-father--points out that if they don't want this to be a thing, they need to figure out how to keep it under wraps. "Otherwise someone's going to notice. This girl hanging around with us that we call Matt."

"Could be short for Matilda," Matt chips in, which is entirely not the point.

Dom tries to be more helpful. "You could stop with the lady clothes and just stay you until it goes away."

"What, like, bind them up?" Matt clutches his breasts like Dom's suggested cutting them off. One of the thin straps of his cute little floral sundress slips off his shoulder, because apparently he's spent a solid portion of the last two days fucking _shopping_ , and Dom's going to stay annoyed about that because it's better than paying attention to the sundress with its fucking wandering straps and snug waist and flirty hem around Matt's thighs. Which he seems to have had fucking waxed. Not that Dom's looking. It's just… obvious.

"Or," Chris says, with endless patience, "you could just take a holiday somewhere you don't actually live and probably won't be recognised."

A whole lot of things flit over Matt's face. He lets go of his tits and hauls the strap back onto his shoulder. "That's--right. Yes. Nice." He pulls out a jaunty grin. "Keep saying I want to spend more time in New York, don't I?"

But in that moment of uncertainty, Dom's remembered that night, outside his place, before the cab showed up. _I'm not alone._

It's never really been far from his thoughts over the past couple days, to be honest. And he's thinking of Matt, at fourteen, dealing with a body that suddenly wasn't his, no idea what was going on, coping with it without them. Matt, now, in New York, coping with it without them. Again. "How come he gets all the fun?" he finds himself saying. "I want a holiday to New York as well."

"Fuck off," Matt snipes, "I'm not taking you on my fucking holiday." But there's a smile lurking in the edges of his grumpiness, and it starts breaking through as he adds, "You'll bollocks up my ability to pull."

Chris blinks. "What?"

Dom says, "Matt wants to take the equipment out for a spin," like he thinks it's nothing but hilarious.

"Fuck me." Chris's eyes go wide. "You could get it on with a lesbian."

Matt slaps a hand on the table and points at him like he's a genius. "Exactly."

"Or a bloke," Dom points out, and when Chris frowns at him, he hurries to add, "It was his suggestion."

But Chris's frown has turned thoughtful. "See how the other half lives." He gets that sly look. "Good research." As Matt cackles, Chris gets serious again. "You want to be careful, though. Picking the bloke."

Matt scoffs. "Yeah, if I fuck _you_ I'm liable to wind up pregnant."

Chris spreads his hands, shrugs a little, all what-can-you-do? Like his virility is just one more thing he's accepted about his lot in life, like his height or being good at football. "You know what I mean. There are some blokes that just, y'know--" He pulls a face.

Matt pulls an answering one. "I'm not another of your daughters."

"Let him fuck an arse," Dom interjects. "It'll be character building."

"The point," Matt leans across the table with that terrible leer that makes Dom want to simultaneously laugh in anticipation and slap a hand over his mouth to stop whatever comes next, "is that arses need not be involved."

Chris rolls his eyes so hard it tilts his head back. "Go the fuck to New York," he orders.

* * *

**Day 17**

They go to New York--book flights and an Air BnB. There are people they could call, friends of friends of friends with apartments standing empty that they could make use of for the next seventy days, but that would defeat the purpose. Even if Dom does the calling, all it would take was someone mentioning something, someone spotting him, and Matt along with him, and all the attempt at anonymity would be undone. Matt can hardly hide; he still looks exactly like himself.

And, at the same time, not quite. The tiny details of it still weird Dom the hell out, but he's here to be moral fucking support, and it's not like _he_ 's the one coping with having tits, so just suck it up and deal, Howard.

"It might be different if you could do something about your hair," Dom considers, on the plane, as Matt conducts his usual high-speed skim through the onboard literature. He finds the weirdest shit in there sometimes. Restaurant recommendations, facts about wildlife, random bits about scientific theories that show up in rambling drunken diatribes--or lyrics--months later.

"How do you even say that?" Matt says, pointing at the magazine.

Dom glances over his shoulder at the page--a glossy travel special on Iceland--and then elbows him. "No, I'm fucking not."

"Do it." Matt elbows him back, already giggling.

Dom slumps in his seat, but it's not like he can resist that grin, and they both know it. "Eyjafjallajökull," he obliges, and ignores the twist of his stomach as Matt collapses in delight and mirth.

So he doesn't think about the hair comment again until, third day they're in New York, Matt comes back to the apartment and just starts pulling wigs out of a bag. Actually, Dom thinks the first one is an animal of some sort--the slam of the door jerked him out of a nap, all right, and it's taking him a moment to wake up properly--and it's not until Matt's pulling the third one out, setting the blonde curls down next to black straight and brown wavy, that Dom realises what they are.

"Holy shit." He sits up on the couch and points at the blonde one. "Do Marilyn."

"That is exactly what I thought." Matt's practically bouncing, words fast and grin fluid as he picks up the wig, turns it round. "I figured by the time I got the others I might as well get a third and then I just couldn't resist." He bends over to fit it carefully over his head; clearly there was a lesson in putting the things on included in the purchase. 

Then again, these aren't the sorts of cheap costume wigs they've all woken up crooked and hungover in at one time or another; these are high quality and nicely made. When Matt tosses his head back, the curls slither against each other like real hair, settling around his ears. It looks fucking perfect; he pats at it anyway, flutter of long fingers, then tucks up into a fair impersonation of classic Monroe cheesecake and blows Dom an exaggerated kiss.

Aside from the skinny red jeans and black t-shirt it's a pretty good likeness. Dom laughs for sheer fucking delight, and Matt's pucker cracks into a cackle. He whips the wig off, hair sticking up every which way in its wake. "I know, right? Good for a laugh though. Couldn't decide between the others. So we've got--" 

He flips the black wig onto his head, shakes a little to let the brutal straight bob cut settle around his face. It makes his cheekbones look sharp enough to cut fucking glass. Dom nods. "Natalie Portman in that assassin movie, nice."

"Fuck off," Matt spits. "Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction."

"You fucking wish." Dom laughs as Matt gestures with two belligerent fingers. "And the other one?"

Matt hauls the black wig off and reaches for the brown. It's a lot longer, Dom can tell that even as he's fitting it on his head. "Now this looks really girly," he heckles.

And then Matt flips the hair back, and Dom shuts the hell up in a hurry. It is longer, falling around his shoulders in loose waves, glossy and smooth. A lock falls across Matt's face, and he brushes it away with a casual finger and Dom's mouth has gone dry.

He looks fucking gorgeous. The sweep of hair somehow softens all his angles, just enough that he looks striking rather than pointed. He's biting his lip a little, attention all on getting the unfamiliar hair settled, and his eyes look huge.

Dom knows this bolt of lust like an old friend, but he doesn't know how to deal with it when there isn't a drum kit, a set list, thousands of screaming fans to distract him.

Matt frowns a little. "No?"

"Uh," Dom says, intelligently. "No. I mean, yes. I mean." He swallows. "This one is good. Good choice."

"Nice." Matt's grin is simultaneously a familiar relief, and fucking devastating. "Then we are going out and I am getting a bloody legover."

"Fuck's sake," Dom manages, feeling like he's searching for normal with both hands. "You're a man possessed. Woman. Whatever."

"It's been more than two weeks, Dominic," Matt declares crisply, all business-like, tossing the black and blonde wigs back in their bags. Dom both wishes he'd take the brown wig off, and never wants him to do any such thing. "Women have needs too."

"Wait, you haven't…" Dom blinks. "Should it be called jerking off when there's nothing to jerk?"

Matt looks up at him, arching an eyebrow, and the hair falling around his face makes it far more intimate than usual. Dom can feel a strange heat climbing in him and it's been so long since he blushed that it takes him a moment to realise what's happening. By that stage, Matt's giggling, and that helps, makes it easier to be annoyed than imagining.

"Get dressed," Matt orders, still smirking. "We're going out."

* * *

They go to a bar neither of them have ever been to in a part of Manhattan they don't really know either. It's a nice enough place, busy without feeling frantic, artsy without trying too hard, but honestly all Dom cares about is getting a drink fast. As if the brown wig wasn't bad enough, Matt's dressed up in tight black jeans (that, to be fair, he probably already owned) and a red top that is definitely new. It slinks down over Matt's collarbones like it's liquid; the back is nothing but a cats-cradle of spaghetti straps and an obvious absence of bra. (Dom doesn't get it; he's seen Matt's back before. He's seen Matt's entirely naked back. Why is it suddenly something compelling and forbidden?)

Matt steps up beside him at the bar, actually taller than Dom because oh yes, he's also wearing three-inch heels. "Do I want to know why you're so confident walking in those?" Dom asks, not looking. There's no safe place to look.

"Keep some mystery in the relationship, Dom." Matt giggles as their drinks arrive; the bartender gives him a little smile along with his glass. Matt doesn't even seem to notice, busy whisking the straw straight out of his drink, tossing it aside with a faint sneer. "Right," he mutters. "Here we go."

There's something in his voice that Dom recognises before he even thinks about it, has heard every night before they step out into the blinding lights; it reminds him that he's supposed to be here to help. "Hey." Dom turns, then. Looks. Matt's already taken half a step away but he's looking back, hair tumbling down over his bared shoulder. Gorgeous, gamine, girly. But still the same Matt that Dom's known since they were both barely old enough to be allowed out on their own. His best mate. So Dom braces himself, and gives Matt a deliberate onceover. Smiles. "You look fucking amazing. Knock 'em dead."

His reward is a wink and a smirk that makes it hard to look away when Matt turns and saunters across the bar. He is actually walking a little slower, more carefully than usual, but the heels make his hips swing, and Dom wants to run a hand over that curve, tuck his fingers into the back pocket of Matt's--

He turns back to the bar and grimly swallows half his whiskey in one go.

* * *

Dom's not even sure why he's here. Moral support--more like immoral support, really--or some sort of sheepdog keeping the wolves at bay, back-up in case Matt gets in over his head. Maybe he should be keeping an eye on what's going on, but by this stage of their lives he's seen the Bellamy magic at work too many times. Dom doesn't imagine that New York lesbians are going to be any more immune to that perfect blend of arrogant and vulnerable and just plain weird than straight girls anywhere else in the world. And it seems unlikely there'll be any fights with jealous boyfriends to break up.

Every time a flash of red does catch the corner of his eye, turn his head without permission, it's a gust of laughter--Matt's or a girl's--and a toss of hair and flashing eyes, painted lips close to ears in the noisy bar. They haven't actually talked about logistics. Dom supposes that when Matt pulls, he's going home alone to wait for a phone call in the morning. He bloody hopes that's the plan; that he isn't going to have to listen to Matt's journey of sapphic discovery across the apartment.

He's just polishing off his second drink, trying to drown that depressing thought, when someone slides onto the stool next to his. "Good timing," she says, like she's congratulating him. "Can I buy you another?"

She's lean and tanned, hair ruthlessly platinum and trimmed artistically against her skull. Her silver dress doesn't care to slink when it can outright state; she's accessorised with a bold blue scarf and a bolder smile.

Dom's a little surprised he hasn't thought of this option before now. This whole business has his head in a mess.

Cara buys him a drink. She works in an art gallery, or maybe a business that works with art galleries, but she does things with numbers rather than art and that's all Dom can make out really. He doubts she's got any firmer idea of what he does, especially since he's being deliberately vague on the details. She's got an irritating habit of finishing his sentences, and not quite the way he might've done, but she's also got absolutely incredible legs, and she's pleased when she catches him noticing, and he doesn't think she's considering anything that'll give him enough time to get really irritated at that habit. "God, your accent," she declares, as he orders them another round. "You just passing through?"

He could really do with clearing his head, and she looks like a swift, vigorous dose of sanity.

So of course that's when there's a flash of red and a clipped voice says, almost too fast to be understood, "Sorry, don't want to be interrupting anything here."

"Oh." Cara uncrosses her magnificent legs, slips off her stool. "No, I'm sorry, I didn't realise--"

"It's not--" Dom says.

But Matt's already saying, "What? Fuck no. Darling, we're just mates." He grins, but there's a brittle brightness to it, and Dom's not entirely surprised when the next thing out of his mouth is, "Take him home and fuck him senseless; he could do with it. I'm just pissing off. Don't mind me."

There's no one with him, no one waiting between here and the door to tuck a manicured hand into Matt's elbow; he stalks through the crowd alone, back rigid like it only gets when he has something to prove.

"I should--" Dom says, tossing down money to cover his round.

Cara sighs and picks up her drink. "Enjoy your holiday."

* * *

Dom has to jog to catch up; Matt's got an impressive turn of speed in those heels. "What?" he says as he falls into step beside Matt. "Are lesbians harder to chat up than straight birds? Because I _know_ the accent works a treat."

Matt smiles, but it's a brief, sharp flash. "Yeah, sorry about that. I forgot how it'd look with--" He shrugs, shoulders tight with his arms folded, pinning down the slinky red top and making it just a wisp of material. He must be cold, but Dom would feel incredibly weird offering his coat.

Offers reassurance instead. "It's fine."

Matt grunts, and after that it's silence all the way back to their building, though it doesn't take that long, the speed they're going, even Matt in his heels. As Dom hits the button for their floor in the lift, though, Matt's tottering on one foot, leaning against his shoulder, to haul the shoes off. "Fuck heels," he mutters.

"What's it like being tall, though?" Dom asks. "Or average-ish. For once."

"Sod off," Matt suggests, but there's no vehemence to it. Not that Dom was expecting any; they've both of them been short their whole lives, it's not been holding them back.

"Well," Dom points out, as the lift doors ding open again. "Doesn't get you laid, clearly."

Matt's silent again, until the apartment door swings closed behind them and he's dropped his shoes in the middle of the entrance hall--Dom just steps over them. Then Matt says abruptly, "I thought I was in, and then the girl said she thought I was cute, but she didn't do threesomes, especially not with blokes."

Dom blinks. "What?"

"She thought I was recruiting." Matt makes that ticked-off face of his.

"For a threesome." Dom still isn't sure he gets it. Especially not with blokes? _Oh._ "Fuck, what-- _me_?" Matt gives him the ticked-off face, and Dom feels guilty, which is absurd because it isn't like he did anything other than sit there and get cockblocked. Though now it sounds like the cockblocking was sort of mutual, though entirely unintentional. "Sorry, mate."

Matt twitches his shoulders, and tugs at his wig, which doesn't move at all. He pulls another face. "I'm going to need a mirror to get this thing off." He heads down the corridor, calling back over his shoulder. "It's not like you were acting like my boyfriend, so I don't know what she was on about."

Dom follows along without really thinking about it. "How many offers do you think she gets that she has, like, a policy?"

As he flips on the light in his bedroom, Matt giggles, and the sound of it unknots a bit of tension in Dom. There are clothes strewn all over his unmade bed, male and female and ones it's hard to pin an intended gender on. A bra--purple and lacy--is hooked over the corner of an open drawer, and ordinarily that'd be cause for heckling, but now Dom averts his gaze hastily. Matt's already in his bathroom; Dom props in the doorway and watches him fiddling with the wig. Matt glances at him in the mirror, amusement still lurking around his mouth. "Give us a hand here?"

Dom steps into the bathroom, follows directions in hunting out the pins lurking around Matt's hairline. It's delicate, fiddly work, probably not as tricky as it seems when Dom's far too aware of his fingers brushing against the nape of Matt's bowed neck, of how he's leaning in so close to see what he's doing that he can feel the gust of own breath reflected from Matt's bare skin. Matt smells faintly of perfume that he wasn't wearing at the start of the evening.

"She was pretty fit," Matt says, so suddenly that Dom nearly drops a pin down the barely-there back of his shirt. "Mostly she just seemed like fun." He's looking down into the sink, but Dom can see the smirk from the curve of his cheek. "If we actually were looking for a threeway, I'd have gone with your catch."

"The legs, right?" Dom says, mouth going on autopilot.

"Holy shit," Matt declares, "those legs."

Dom's briefly stuck in a dizzying hell of Matt's smirk and Cara's legs and the suppliant bend of Matt's neck beneath his hand when he realises there don't seem to be any more pins. "Oh. I think that's it."

He steps back, as Matt pulls the wig off entirely, and there he is, himself again--more or less--dragging a hand through his own hair. It's disarranged and spiky with sweat. "Thank fuck," he sighs. "It's bloody hot in this thing."

Dom takes another step back. "Right. Well. G'night then."

"Yeah, night," Matt says absently, frowning in the mirror.

* * *

But when Dom shuts the door to his bedroom behind him, his fingertips are still tingling faintly. The blood in his veins feels both sluggish and insistent. He won't sleep like this. Can't.

He strips off, turns on the shower, steps under the spray. Bends his own head, runs a hand over the back of his neck, letting the tendons slip past his fingertips. Putting off the inevitable.

He's half hard before his hand slips down over his stomach. He thinks firmly of Cara, of those amazing legs, of running a hand from hip down over her thigh, hooking fingers behind her knee, pulling her snug against him.

Braces his other hand against the shower wall and goes for it in earnest as the water beats down against his shoulders. A warm drop runs over his lip and he can pretend it's sweat. ( _Bloody hot in this thing._ ) Cara's sweat, licked from the tan arch of her throat as he pushes her skirt up further. That silver thing she'd been wearing, bold as the considering slant of her gaze, it wouldn't be soft at all.

Not like Matt's red top, all slink and insinuation. That'd be silken against the knuckles of a hand slipped beneath it, no resistance at all as Dom slides fingertips over his ribs to cup the curve of his breast, and he'd get that shocked look, eyes wide and teeth just barely caught in his bottom lip until his mouth starts to curve toward that smirk and-- _fuck_.

Dom comes, gasping and guilty.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The get-Matt-laid campaign continues, this time with somewhat greater success...

**Day 19**

"No, I will not fucking _gay up_ to play your wingman, frankly that's insulting to--"

"Come on." Matt's practically laughing, which isn't helping his argument any. "It's not like it would take much."

"Fuck you."

"How many times have you been hit on by a bloke?"

Dom points his beer bottle at Matt. "You want to start on that, little mister goth twink?"

"Nice." Matt cackles, and polishes off the last of his beer. "Well, this place we're going is a queer bar, so--" He shrugs. "Your call."

And in the end, Dom fends off the mascara--though of course he heckles all the way through Matt applying it to his own eyes--but he doesn't stint on the hair products and puts together an outfit of items that, yes, have traditionally earned him appreciative glances from both genders in equal numbers.

Dom actually likes the place better than the other one they went to; it feels more comfortable, actually less like a meat market, like everyone's just here having fun and any hook-ups are totally incidental. The bartender is flamboyant and luscious-lipped, and he flirts with both of them, complimenting Matt's dress (a flowers-on-black-satin number that Dom thought was blessedly tame until he noticed--and then couldn't un-notice--the way it turned the tuck and flare of Matt's waist into some sort of dangerous secret), and refusing to bring Dom his order, but instead something bright pink in a tiki glass with a sparkler. Matt laughs hard enough to nearly fall over, but once Dom actually tastes it, he pays up and asks for another when he's done.

Matt's in the black wig tonight, and flat shoes, and he takes his time loitering beside Dom, eyeing the room. But he slinks off at the end of his first drink; Dom stays put. 

People come and go at the bar, sliding in beside Dom, exchanging a few words as they wait for drinks, sliding away again. The bartender flirts with all of them, and half the time he tips Dom a wink as well, like they're all in this together. He spreads good humour in his wake like fairydust.

When the bartender comes back with the third ridiculous pink thing for Dom, he says, "Her first time out on the scene?" He nods across the bar, presumably to Matt.

Dom is nowhere near drunk enough to start getting dangerously honest, but he smiles. "Always been into girls, but it's--well, it's easier here than back home." After all, maybe if Dom spins a good story it'll head off another threesome misunderstanding, and the bartender's a nice bloke who deserves a friendly answer.

A nice bloke with a serious set of lips that he knows how to use to his advantage; he purses them now, thoughtfully and luxuriantly, leaning elbows against the bar. "But you aren't…" He tilts his head, and perhaps he's watching the way Dom's gaze has snagged on his mouth, because that mouth curves in a smile. "Or are you?"

Dom's never been a vehement denier. He _has_ been hit on plenty by blokes. It's always flattering; he tries to ease out of it without hurting feelings. No one needs to carry scars just because he fancies a bloke so rarely that it's just easier to avoid the question altogether. But here--in a queer bar a long way from anyone who knows him and chatting to a lovely bloke who brings him delicious pink drinks--the usual cheerful deflection feels a bit cheap. Instead Dom shifts his shoulders a little, says, "Only--what's the term? That bloke with the scale?" He waves a hand, like that indicates a range. "Only incidentally."

Further down the bar, a pair of skinny young blokes collapse against the bar laughing; one waves cheerfully at the bartender, who tilts a languid hand back and straightens up. Back to work. But he gives Dom one last smiling look before he heads away, and says, "Oh to be an incident."

It makes Dom grin into his ridiculous pink drink, and he's still grinning when Matt slides in beside him at the bar and says, "Hey, I'm heading off." He's wearing that bright-eyed smug look that Dom's seen a hundred times.

Dom turns enough that he can give a friendly smile and a casual, "Hi," to the woman waiting a little distance away. She's got copper-coloured hair in a cut not unlike Matt's usual, and extra piercings in eyebrow and nostril; she waggles purple-painted fingernails in a little wave. "I won't wait up," Dom tells Matt.

Who lifts his eyebrows and pushes away from the bar, tucking an arm around his redhead as they weave toward the door. She tilts back her head and laughs, carrying even over the rowdy bar. It's an almost familiar sound; Matt's always loved a girl who isn't timid about how she's feeling.

Dom turns back to the bar and slowly works his way through the rest of his pink thing. He sets the empty glass back down on the sticky surface, and when he looks up, the bartender's there, like magic, with his friendly smile on that gorgeous mouth. "Another?" he offers.

Dom considers it. Considers asking what time he gets off. Considers just what those lips can clearly do--and like he knows what Dom's thinking, the bartender's smile widens.

But it seems like a sort of shitty thing to do when Dom's depressingly sure he'd be thinking of another bloke's mouth the entire time. And that bloke isn't even a bloke right now.

"Thanks," Dom says instead, sincerely and regretfully. "But I should get an early night." And he tips like a motherfucking king.

* * *

He's not letting himself indulge in another shower like last time, so getting to sleep isn't the easiest thing Dom's ever done. It feels like he's barely closed his eyes when some noise pries them open again. There's a gleam of light showing under his door, and he didn't leave any lights on, so it must mean Matt's back. When Dom peers at the bedside clock, the malevolent red numbers tell him it's barely past one, which means both that he _has_ barely closed his eyes, and also Matt's back stupidly early for how chuffed he'd looked about his pull. Dom hadn't expected to see him for another six hours, at least. And that only if the redhead had to work.

Dom tells himself to go back to sleep. Isn't entirely surprised when he heaves out of bed instead. Blames still being half asleep for not realising pulling trousers on over his boxers might be a good idea until he's already stepping into the living area of the apartment.

Matt looks up from where he's sitting on the end of the dining table, wig dangling from one hand and a glass of water in the other. "Shit, sorry," he says. "Did I wake you?"

"S'fine," Dom says, through a yawn, and shuffles over to lean against the end of the breakfast bar. "Everything all right?"

Matt spins the wig around on his hand, letting the hair flare out, then tosses it aside. "I couldn't--" he starts, and Dom is briefly terrified of what verb might come next. But Matt swallows, and tries again. "It seemed underhanded."

Dom's still too asleep for this conversation, or maybe Matt's just stuck in that liminal space between drunk and sober where he makes even less sense than usual. "What did?"

Matt drinks some of his water, and says, "She likes girls. She picked me up and took me back to hers and thought she was kissing a girl."

"You are a girl," Dom points out.

"I'm not," Matt says firmly. "I'm just--" He waves a hand. "Wearing the accessories."

Dom supposes it's true. He might have leapt into dresses and wigs and heels and… whatever the fuck else, but then Matt has always been a bit of showpony. He is still, undeniably, unflinchingly, Matthew Bellamy, and the amount of shit they've given him their entire lives for being girly has been funny _because_ he's a bloke. Except, apparently, when he sort of isn't.

Dom's getting nowhere here. The point is: "So… no lesbian sex then. Or does that apply to straight blokes as well? Though--" He's thinking his way through this even as the words leave his mouth. "Do they really care as long as they're getting some?"

"I don't know," Matt growls, running a hand through his wig-bent hair and leaving it even more all-over-the-place than before. "I thought perhaps if I really went at it, y'know, the hair and the dresses and the fucking shoes, if I made it a _thing_ , then it would all make more sense. It would be different enough, not me but still me, but--All I know is it's been three fucking weeks and I can't--"

He stops, but something about the tight hunch of his shoulders, the kick of one bare heel against the table leg… it seems familiar to Dom, and he finally realises it's from that one tour they had where Matt decided he was serious about Gaia, like seriously serious, and there weren't going to be any random hook-ups. By the time they hit the final week of dates before she could come join them Matt was just about snarling at everyone, until they locked him in the bus, shouting through the door that he wasn't allowed out until he'd jerked the fuck off. And Matt of course did so all over Dom's pillow, the pissy bitch, but at least he was bearable after that.

That sort of frustration. Dom had joked about it, which makes him feel a bit shit now, but also still confused. "You… can't? But you know how to get a girl off." Thanks to the many blessings of oversharers and cramped tour conditions around the world, Dom knows with way more certainty and detail than he'd like that Matt is entirely capable of getting a girl off with hands alone.

Matt taps his fingernails against his glass; he usually keeps them brutally short, for the piano, but maybe he's been letting them grow in all this. "It's different when it's me, when I'm thinking about both sides and it just--that's the problem, the thinking, too much thinking--except if I get drunk enough to not think so much then I can't actually _feel_ all that much either and mostly I just give up and pass out."

It's a barrage of imagery, a frustrated and fumbling Matt, and in desperation Dom just talks back at him. "So you need someone else to give you a hand, but if you don't want to put one over some poor lass, or even some unsuspecting bloke, then it's going to have to be someone who knows what's going on and that just leaves--"

Chris. Or Dom himself. And Chris isn't here.

Matt looks up, meets Dom's eyes, and lifts an eyebrow. It's a confirmation, a question, an invitation, and Dom can't breathe. Imagines--just for a moment--stepping forward and laying hands on him, kissing him hard and sweeping, pushing him back on the table and just _fucking him_. It's so vivid he's actually surprised to blink and find himself still leaning against the breakfast bar, no time passed.

He sucks a breath in, and Matt slips down off the table, mouth hard. "Right. That's about enough of this fucking debacle, I'm--"

"Wait." Dom steps forward, holds an arm out, blocking him from going anywhere. Realises it a moment later, drops the arm. "Sorry. I just. I hadn't even thought about--" Lie. He's thought about it way too much.

Matt shrugs, finishes his water and leans around Dom to set the glass on the bar. "It's fine. Stupid late-night drunken idea. Not the first, won't be the last. I'll be fine."

Also a lie. "We've still got--" Dom can't remember; has lost count of the time. "Sixty or something days to go. You are not going to fucking last two months like this. If nothing else, you're going to get so bloody aggravating that I murder you and that really would bollocks everything up."

Matt drums his fingers against the dining table, notices he's doing it and grimaces. "I am kinda crawling out of my skin," he admits.

"All right," Dom says, and doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. Can't get any perspective on this, doesn't know if he's being a good friend or a selfish bastard. He eases a little closer, licks too-dry lips. "Just… a mate helping out a mate. Nothing weird here."

A tiny giggle bubbles out of Matt. "There is a lot fucking weird here."

Then Dom's laughing too, because there really is, holy shit, so much fucking weird. But by the time they've both stopped giggling, Matt's leaning a little more relaxed against the table, and Dom lays a hand on his waist. Doesn't let himself linger, like if he keeps them moving forward, they can't get snagged again in the oddity; smoothes his hand down over Matt's hip, starting to gather up his skirt.

"Forward," Matt mutters, like he can't help himself. "Could at least buy me a drink."

"I have bought you a shit ton of drinks," Dom points out, barely any attention to spare for what he's saying when Matt's bare leg is flexing just a little beneath his fingertips. He watches Matt swallow--less obvious without the Adam's apple--as he strokes his thumb across the soft skin of Matt's inner thigh. Slides his knuckles up, beneath the floral satin skirt, until he nudges up against lace.

Dom pauses, not sure. Not sure if _Matt's_ sure. Not sure if they should really--

And then Matt's eyes flutter closed, the lashes something obscene with the mascara he applied before going out, and his knees shift just a little more apart. This is really fucking happening. Dom lets his hand slip higher.

He tries to keep dispassionate about it, tries to measure how he's doing from Matt's face, his breathing, the tilt of his body. Keeps slow and gentle and exploratory until he gets a sign--a little tweak at Matt's mouth, the faintest not-quite-aspirated noise caught in his throat--that he's found an interesting angle. More of that, then.

He feels a little distanced, almost clinical, even as he eases closer, shifts his hand beneath Matt's skirt. Sure, Dom wants to make him come screaming, but it's almost more professional pride than personal ambition. He's going to be critiqued for this, at length and in detail; that's a given. He intends to bring his A-game. Judge carefully his moment to change or escalate--to nudge the lacy knickers aside, to press more firmly--from the dart of Matt's tongue over his lips, the increasing pace and sound of his breathing. Dom's doing fine, he's just completing a challenge--fucking _acing_ a challenge--and not at all having a dizzy moment at feeling how wet Matt is.

He's still doing fine when Matt gives a little whine, and his hips twitch. Still fine when his hand catches at Dom's forearm, desperate and grasping, before it shifts, up Dom's arm to his shoulder, like Matt's bracing himself. Still fine as Matt mutters, "Just--can you--I need--"

Fine, until Dom slides a finger inside him, and Matt gasps, "Fuck, Dom." It sizzles over Dom's skin like he's been electrified. He's suddenly entirely, scaldingly present.

Here with Matt wedged between his body and the table, with Matt's fingers digging into the muscle of his upper arm, as Dom crooks his finger and Matt's head tips back on a breathy whimper. His mouth drops open, and it's such a familiar look on him, this concentration and exultation and satisfaction; Dom's seen it hundreds of times on stages across the world, and this time it's not the music causing it, it's Dom, and Matt is _right there_ , no distance at all between them.

Dom can just lean forward, and bite his bottom lip.

Matt moans--genuinely fucking moans--and tilts against Dom's hand. Then _his_ hand's at the back of Dom's neck, holding him tight as he presses up against Dom. He shifts a little, between Dom and the table, one thigh flexing against Dom's wrist, and then he's lifting it, hooking his foot behind Dom's knee, tugging him closer.

It's only when the movement grinds him against Matt's hip that Dom realises he's hard. Now Dom's gasping, and Matt's turning the tables, his mouth slanting across Dom's. Dom works his hand with renewed vigour, thumb and fingers, and Matt's kiss starts to get sloppy as he pants. "Fuck," he gasps, a puff of breath against Dom's damp mouth, and Dom thinks it's the hottest thing he's ever experienced, until Matt arches and groans, taut and shaking. His hips buck against Dom's hand, and he's gripping so tight at Dom's neck that it nearly hurts.

Dom slips his hand free, tries to ease back, but Matt's ankle is still hooked around his knee. He shifts, pulls Dom even tighter against him, nestled flush between his thighs, and Dom groans into his mouth. Doesn't have the strength not to grind against Matt, where he's so hot and wet that Dom can feel it through his boxers and he wants--he _wants_ \--

"Yes," Matt hisses, biting at Dom's bottom lip, and he can't possibly mean it, except then he's saying, "My handbag's on the bar; there's a condom in the side pocket."

Dom flails behind him, just about knocks over Matt's empty glass, finds the bag and the pocket. He's got the foil packet open and a thumb hooked in the waistband of his boxers before his brain catches up (he's surprised it's still trying at all, honestly). "Just what were you expecting, taking this along to pick up a lesbian?"

Matt smirks at him, eyes still bright, mouth kiss-reddened. "Be prepared. I hear threesomes are a thing in this town."

"You were never a scout," Dom scoffs, just by default.

One of Matt's eyebrows goes up. "Do you really fucking care?" And as though in emphasis, he reaches up under the skirt still rucked up around his hips, and hauls his black lacy underwear down his legs and off entirely.

By the time Dom has his boxers off and the condom on, Matt's hoiked himself up on the edge of the table, leaning back on a hand and holy shit. Dom _is_ going to fuck Matt on the dining table. He pauses then, between Matt's thighs, hand on his knee. "Are you--" _sure_ , he never gets to say.

Because Matt growls, "Do it." And Dom does, takes hold of Matt's hips and pushes inside.

Matt yelps, his whole body tensing, and Dom freezes. "What?"

"Fuck," Matt mutters, not in a good way, but not quite a bad way. "I'm a fucking _virgin_?"

He sounds so disgruntled, like of everything that's come with turning randomly, bizarrely, unexpectedly into a woman, this was the biggest personal insult; Dom can't help the laughter that fizzes up in him, overflowing like champagne.

"Shut up," Matt says, but Dom can hear the giggle under the thin veneer of outrage. "This is supposed to be pornography, not comedy."

"I can--" Dom offers, still grinning, and pulls back.

"Don't you dare," Matt snaps, wraps a leg around him and squeezes him tight, arching up with the movement.

They both groan, and Dom braces a hand on the table. Moves gently, carefully, letting them both get used to this. He needs to keep a hand on Matt, hold him steady, or he slips on the polished surface. This is probably terrible for the table, but with Matt's head falling back on a sigh, his hips starting to tilt up to Dom's thrusts, Dom really can't summon much concern for furniture.

"Nature documentary," he says, a bit breathy.

"What?" Matt doesn't stop moving, barely forms a frown before his mouth's twitching on a gasp. "Oh, fuck, yes, there."

"Pornography. Comedy. Nature documentary," Dom manages. "Mating habits of the misgendered Bellamy."

A brief, truncated giggle. "Nice." And then Matt's groaning, arching a little more, his bracing hand smearing against the table. "God, Dom," he breathes, like they're one and the same, and then, "Harder."

Dom picks up the pace, and he doesn't know how much longer he can last, not with Matt like this beneath him, sweaty and flushed as if they've just played a blinder, incoherent and vehement with skating along an edge of anticipatory bliss, until he tips over, finally, achingly, release shaking his body and pulling Dom after him.

They collapse on the table, a damp and panting tangle; the legs chirp against the floor. "Fuck," Matt huffs, like a revelation.

Dom can't help a snort of laughter. "Yes," he says, "that's what it was." He levers and slides and pushes his way to standing.

By the time he's dealt with the condom, Matt's slithered down off the table, is twitching his skirt back into something like order. It's hopelessly creased though; he pulls a face. "That's this dress munted." He bends, and swipes up the underthings littering the floor; flicks Dom's boxers underhand and Dom catches them purely on reflex. Matt saunters away down the corridor, his lacy knickers dangling from one finger, wig clutched in the other hand. "I am going to sleep fucking well tonight."

He has that familiar jangling, sex-loosened swing to his gait, and this time Dom's the one responsible. He's still naked in the kitchen, sweat cooling on his skin, and he can barely believe it just happened.

At the end of the corridor, Matt turns on the light in his room; his silhouette raises a hand. "Ta, mate," he calls. "See you in the morning."

"Yeah," Dom manages. "No worries."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing weird in helping a mate out, right? Except there are still sixty days to go...

**Day 20**

It's more like afternoon by the time Dom drags himself out of bed, through the shower, back out into the living area. Matt's sprawled out on the couch with an arm over his eyes and an empty mug on the table beside him. Dom opens the fridge, looks blankly at the interior, closes it again, and says those three little words: "All day breakfast?"

Matt sits bolt upright on the couch. "Fuck yes."

There's a place down the block and around the corner that actually knows how to do a proper breakfast fry-up _and_ a decent cup of tea. Halfway through both, Dom finally manages to look at Matt directly. He's dipping a chip (a proper chip, no fucking fries here) in Worcestershire sauce, looking out the window with that frown that means his brain is ticking over; it's been nearly two decades and Dom still never knows what's going to come out of his mouth after that look. That long, and Dom still wants to hear it, every time. Even if this time it might be, _that was a mistake_.

He doesn't think it will be, though. Matt sprawls in his side of the booth, one arm draped along the back. No drumming fingers, no tapping feet. He's relaxed. At ease. In the relative calm that Dom fucked him into.

"I keep thinking about that thing I read on the plane." Matt turns to look at Dom, blinking in the change of light. "Iceland. What was the name of the volcano?" Dom shakes his head, refuses to say it again. Matt just grins, and starts going on about the power of extremes, heat and cold, the sky and the earth. As always, he sounds halfway between telling a joke and starting a cult.

Dom listens happily as he polishes off the rest of his breakfast, riding high on the fried goodness and the relief, and only occasionally trying to derail Matt, or nudge him into something else. "Like Vikings," he adds at one point.

"Yes," Matt says, and then frowns. "No, not like fucking Vikings, what the fuck?"

And Dom tips back in his seat and laughs. When he straightens up, wiping at his face, Matt's watching him. "What?"

A shrug. "Just--glad this isn't weird."

Dom too. So fucking glad. "Well, it's probably not the weirdest thing we've done, though I have to admit I'm just making assumptions about the blurry parts in my memory from the early years."

Matt snorts. "Yeah, well. We've still got sixty-whatever days, so…"

Dom's stomach tilts; he waggles his eyebrows and goes over the top saying, "Is this you asking for another go-round?"

"Not here." Matt's quick and grinning. "We're in public, Dom, fuck's sake." And they both laugh.

* * *

They hit the Guggenheim and Dom talks shit about modern art like he knows what he's saying until Matt flips his lid (it takes longer than Dom was expecting) and practically drags Dom out by the collar. (Matt prefers pre-Raphaelites, all overwrought and dramatic and classically inspired, though he wouldn't actually admit it.)

They find a tiny bar promising live music which turns out to be a genuinely terrible band conducting a cover-massacre of recent rock. They order another round every time it's one of theirs, and wind up staggering home not that late, arms around shoulders, bellowing at each other about whether the best Duran Duran song is "Girls on Film" ("You like the fucking softcore pornography film-clip," Matt accuses like the voice of God, and Dom _does_ but that's not the point) or "White Lines" ("They didn't even write it," Dom shouts, over and over, until Matt shoves him into a lamp post).

And it isn't until Dom's in the shower the next morning that he realises they're both fucking wrong. He doesn't bother with more than a towel around his waist before he heads out to the kitchen, where Matt hands him a mug of tea and says, "Hungry like the wolf, I know, what the fuck were we on about; I mean, you I understand, but I'm disappointed in myself."

It's fine, really. It's fine.

Except that Matt's just wearing the same sweatpants and t-shirt he'd usually slob around in, hair a mess, face pillow-creased, and yet still when Dom tells him he can fuck the entire way off, and he grins and giggles, Dom's stomach does that flip, and he wants--briefly, dazzlingly, like a flash of sunlight reflected off the sea--to back him against the cabinets and kiss him until he moans.

So, except that, it's fine.

* * *

**Day 26**

They do more shopping, and the Empire State Building--why the fuck not, it's been years since Dom last went up there--and eat so much Mexican that even Dom starts getting a little tired of tequila. They're British tourists in New York, basically. It's sort of refreshing.

Sort of refreshing, and sort of not. This feels like the longest Dom's gone without having to be somewhere and do something, which can't be right, surely. They've had breaks before. But usually he's arranged something. Takes the opportunity to fuck off to Italy or Thailand or some party island off the coast of Greece. Finds abundant ways to distract himself.

When Matt's feet start getting that tap, his fingers starting to drum against the edge of the table, his comments getting a little sharper, Dom assumes he's just feeling the same pinch. Tries to think of things they could do that might break the everyday (that might be a distraction) and yet not get them recognised. He gets a whole pile of brochures, flicks through them in front of the telly one night with Matt sitting distractingly close, slouched down until he's practically horizontal. They could go out to see some ridiculous American sport--baseball or basketball or that thing they call football that really isn't--or find some sort of weird nightclub, or perhaps just get a serious spa treatment.

Matt makes this noise beside him on the couch, not quite a growl, and crosses his legs. 

Dom doesn't want to think about it, not the noise, not his legs, so he just keeps talking. "They have this one they do with, like, hot rocks where they lay them down your spine or some shit, I dunno, it sounds weird but I guess--"

"Dom."

"Or that one where they bury you in mud, I've always wanted to--"

" _Dom_." And Matt's moving, up on one knee on the couch, laying a hand on Dom's shoulder and then--

"Oh." Then Matt's straddling him, knees snug on either side of his hips, and as he settles himself on Dom's thighs it's quite clear through his t-shirt that his nipples are hard. (Dom just notices these things, all right? He can't help it, his eyes just gravitate to breasts, it's a character flaw.)

"Massage isn't going to cut it," Matt says, voice low and heavy with gravel in a way that goes straight to Dom's dick. "Unless you're thinking very localised and specific."

He shifts on Dom's lap, hips rolling beneath hands Dom doesn't remember laying on them. "Fuck," he mutters.

"Wouldn't say no," Matt says, quick as silk.

"Matt," Dom says, with a desperate edge. His thumbs slide up, toward Matt's waist, where the band of his boxers gives way to bare skin beneath his t-shirt.

"I know." Matt rests his forehead against Dom's, their faces so close Dom has to close his eyes. It's almost worse like that, the faint teasing puff of Matt's breath against his face. "I just can't--I'm stuck with this for--"

He trails off, still and always hopeless with numbers, with memory for the pesky details. "Sixty days," Dom provides.

He can hear Matt swallow, at this proximity. "Right. Dom, can't we just--"

Dom isn't sure what comes after that _just_. Just go with this, just not talk about it, just let it be for now, just fuck like it doesn't matter, just let this be one more weirdness in three months of it. Can't we _just_.

Dom doesn't think he can. But he can't resist, either.

He shifts forward on the couch, pulling Matt's hips tight against his own, and finds Matt's mouth blind by following the hitch of his breath. They kiss deep and dirty and ravenous, Matt's fist a press of knuckles and tug of hair at the back of Dom's head. Dom slides a hand up his side, beneath the t-shirt and over his ribs, until he can cup Matt's breast. When he brushes thumb over nipple, Matt makes a little sound and breaks off the kiss just long enough to haul his t-shirt up and over his head and away. The television's still playing behind him, casting light and shade over his skin, catching the edge of his smirk. "Sorry," Matt huffs. "Not much to 'em."

Dom shrugs, setting his other hand over Matt's spine, nudging his way beneath Matt's chin. "Any more than a handful's a waste anyway," he murmurs against Matt's jaw.

They both laugh, and Dom bends Matt back over his bracing hand, arches him with the descent of his mouth along his throat, over collarbones. He licks at a nipple, then sucks it into his mouth, and Matt writhes on his lap.

_Can't we just._ But Dom doesn't know how it can be a "just". Doesn't know how he goes back to the everyday, to the way things were before, now that he knows how Matt sounds, mewling in pleasure. How he feels, grinding against Dom for more. How he looks, teeth sunk into his lower lip, neck stretched wantonly, desperate for it.

But they _are_ just, and Dom intends to enjoy every fucking minute of it.

* * *

**Days 27 through… whatever, who's counting anyway?**

They do a day on one of those honest-to-God hop-on-hop-off tourist buses, mostly just sitting in back of the top deck and talking shit, until Matt's people-watching speculations get increasingly pornographic and Dom takes the hint and drags him off the bus and into a taxi headed back to the apartment.

* * *

They fuck in Dom's shower, Matt slipping against the tiles and heckling the whole time--"Come on, put your back into it, what's the point in fucking a drummer if those arms aren't actually good for holding anything u-- _uhhh_ yeah, fuck. Like that."

* * *

They do get the spa treatment where you get buried up to the neck in mud. Matt barely stops giggling the entire time. It's fantastic.

* * *

"This is your favourite, right?" Matt asks, straddling Dom on the bed. The rhythm he's setting, slow but implacable, is already starting to unravel Dom's coherence.

"I told you?" Dom doesn't doubt it's possible, he just doesn't remember it. Then again, there's video footage on the internet of things he doesn't remember.

Matt tilts a little further back, and the change in angle makes them both moan. "Maybe," he says, distracted. "Maybe I just figured it out. Good angle for breasts."

"Great angle," Dom agrees, sliding his hands up Matt's torso to palm both of his, roll the nipples between thumb and finger, and Matt groans and grinds his hips with vigour.

* * *

They're supposed to be heading down to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset because this is a thing you do, apparently. But cutting across a block that Dom's pretty sure they're not supposed to cut across, they find a basement record store. Actual vinyl. And it's nothing big, nothing fancy, Dom can't argue--isn't inclined to--when Matt says, "Come on, no one's going to recognise us."

It's so much bigger than it looks from the outside, and fucking empty, just wooden racks of records lining room after room, like it's the music version of some enchanted bookstore. They spend hours there, silent except for the elbow nudge and appreciative murmurs of a particularly good find, until a small grey chap in a large grey cardigan finds them and tells them he's very sorry but it's closing time.

They do the bridge another day. They buy a record player first.

* * *

"Come on, tell me," Matt purrs, which would be a lot more sex-kitten if he wasn't giggling at the same time. "Sorry. Hang on. I've nearly got this."

He still needs both hands to unfasten his bra. He seems to be taking it as some sort of personal challenge, batting Dom's hands away every time he tries to assist. Which leaves him nothing to do but watch and offer commentary. "Why didn't you get a front-fastening one?"

"Oh, you're a fucking lingerie expert now? Hah!" He shucks the bra--bright red, this one--and tosses it off the bed. "Where was I?"

Dom's still laughing, sliding a hand around Matt's neck to pull him closer. "You were offering to do anything I wanted."

"Oh yeah." Matt slides effortlessly into a leer, bites at Dom's jaw. "Come on. Pony up and tell me, and we can give it a whirl." He barely gives Dom time to think--not that it's all that tempting, to admit an actual fantasy to Matthew fucking Bellamy and run the risk of it coming out in an interview at random--before he's adding, "Come on, pansy, or I'll pick something I think you'll--oh wait, I know."

He crawls backward off Dom, which is no hardship to watch, and disappears into his bathroom. There are rummaging noises, a metallic clatter of something falling into the sink, muttered swearing, none of which leaves Dom with any clear idea of what's going on. "If this involves some sort of weird alien shit," he calls, "then I am--"

Matt comes back out of the bathroom--or rather, strikes a pose in the doorway like a fucking model--wearing nothing but his red knickers and the long, brown wig, tumbling tousled over one eye, around his shoulders, just brushing shy of his nipples.

Dom has no fucking idea what he was just saying.

Matt smirks. "Oh yeah." He tosses his head, brushing the hair back over his shoulder, as he climbs onto the bed. Crawls across it, up Dom's body, the wig brushing at Dom's skin. It's soft and ticklish and Dom's so hard he can barely see straight. "I thought you liked this one," Matt says, smug and sultry, as he leans in.

Dom gathers him up, rolls them over, and shows him just how fucking much he likes it.

* * *

They spend all day in the Park, laid out on the grass or walking around, talking lazily and animatedly and immaterially, doing terribly at the newspaper trivia quiz, getting hotdogs from a cart and throwing sauerkraut at the pigeons, holding hands and making out and no one looking even slightly askance at yet another nice young couple, his bare feet and her flirty sundress.

* * *

There's a meeting that couldn't be put off for another fifty--forty, thirty, whatever--days, something about strategy and marketing, so they call in with Matt's phone on speaker on the dining table as Matt prowls around the room. He prods Dom every time he goes past the couch, though whether this is to keep Dom awake or Matt entertained is, as ever, unclear.

Dom's watching him, so he actually sees the moment when the meeting gets too business-focused and Matt loses interest; his eyes fall on Dom's couch, and his head twitches just a little to the side, considering and faintly predatorial. Dom starts trying to sit up, to slither away from where Matt's climbing over the coffee table, sliding in beside him. A hand lands on his chest, pushing him back down.

"You didn't mute the phone," Dom hisses, and then hisses in earnest as Matt starts unbuttoning his jeans.

"Then you'd better be quiet," Matt whispers, blue eyes wide and cheeky grin wider, and he wraps his hand around Dom's dick.

That hand, that fucking hand, with its long slender fingers and guitar-born calluses and the hundred and one fantasies that Dom has never allowed himself to entertain. _That_ hand.

He grabs a cushion, just about smothers himself with it trying to muffle his harried breathing, his low groan as Matt starts to jack him off in earnest. "Everything all right?" Dom hears from the direction of the dining table, and Matt calls cheerily, "All good. You were saying?" and Dom pants against the cushion, pushes up into Matt's beautiful, ruthless, appalling hand, until he comes to the sound of some wanker in London talking about international sales conversion rates or some shit.

Five seconds after they hang up the phone, Dom has two fingers inside Matt and his breath coming faster. They stagger haphazard down the hallway and Dom lays him out on the nearest bed (his, it turns out) and goes down on him for an hour, alternating tongue and fingers. Until after the third orgasm, Matt collapses across the bed with his head hanging over the edge and just about kicks Dom in the face when he lays a hand on his knee. "Fuck," Matt gasps, "don't you dare, holy shit, I feel like overcooked spaghetti." He starts laughing on the last word, and Dom laughs with him, hauling him back onto the bed properly to just lie side by side, not touching.

* * *

Matt finds a channel on the television that's playing nothing but '80s movies-- _Back to the Future_ and _Gremlins_ and who knows what else--and they just stay on the couch all afternoon, all evening, ordering in from the restaurant downstairs.

They fuck there too, slow and lazy, with Matt still commenting on the movie until Dom puts some effort into distracting him, into making his eyes close and his lips part on a moan. Matt stretches his arms up, bracing against the arm of the couch, and he's just a long swathe of pale perfection in the low light. Dom reaches up for one of his hands, laces their fingers together. "You're so fucking gorgeous," he mutters against Matt's throat, quiet enough that maybe he doesn't even hear.

They stay on the couch, naked beneath the blanket, tangled up in each other. Dom falls asleep pressed against Matt, hair in his face and arm around his waist, and wakes up the same way, television still burbling away quietly, silver-dawn light creeping across the room.

He shifts, and Matt makes a grizzly little noise, wriggles back against him. It makes Dom smile, all of it, and he murmurs, "Good morning," just to hear Matt make the noise again, coming a little more awake. Dom pulls him closer, pressing burgeoning morning wood against his arse, and starts sliding his hand down from Matt's waist. Feels Matt's stomach muscles clench a moment before he--

\--nudges his knuckles against a half-hard dick.

"What the--" Dom blurts, and then Matt is out of his arms, off the couch, standing in the middle of the room entirely naked and entirely himself again--flat and skinny chest, slightly narrower hips, and… well, yes. That's his penis.

He also looks about as shocked as Dom feels. "It hasn't been eighty-six days."

It hasn't. Dom can't remember the date, can't even start to count the days, but it hasn't been. It just _hasn't_. He swallows. "You're back early, apparently."

Matt stares at him, and Dom stares right back. At his face, pale and stunned and speechless; Dom doesn't think he's ever seen Matt this silent for this long when he wasn't so hungover he was nearly dead.

Dom thought there was going to be time to… start easing himself out of this. Time to process. A countdown as they braced themselves.

"Matt," he says, and Matt startles like something's shattered. Goes charging from the room, thundering down the hall, slams a door behind him.

Dom sits up slowly on the couch, like something might break if he moves too fast. Shit.

_Shit_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now everything goes back to normal... right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who read and commented along the way, especially those taking a chance on an author new to the fandom, arriving with a completely bananas concept. I hope this pays off your trust!

**Day 53 and onwards**

They change their flights, head home early. Matt wears sunglasses and headphones; Dom reads the in-flight magazine cover to cover. The travel special's on the Maldives. It looks beautiful and expensive and fucking boring.

It's not like they haven't talked. They've talked about packing and who's drinking the last of the juice and logistics of getting to the airport and fucking queues and what they can't believe they've missed about Britain this time, or every time.

They just haven't even slightly come close to discussing the fact they've been fucking like bunnies for the past month, and they've been very careful not to come within a metre of each other at any time. Including in the lift, Matt wedged into one corner, Dom another, drumming against the railings as he counts down the floor numbers like there's some sort of rescue at the bottom, and not just more of the same.

Back to normal. Right.

* * *

Second day back (Dom is _useless_ for the first) they have a meeting at the label offices--well, not really a meeting, more of a "oh, well, if you're back already how about you just pop in and sign something, darlings, it won't take two secs". Dom's waiting in the lobby, flicking through the pile-up of email on his phone (he feels like he's coming back to the world after being on the fucking moon for a month, it's ridiculous) when someone cries, "Howard!" and an arm lands on his shoulders from a height. "How you doing?"

"Fuck, Chris." Dom fumbles his phone back into his pocket, returns the hug one-armed. "Jetlagged as fuck."

"That's what he said." Chris steps back, and there's Matt. He's half hidden behind sunglasses and a coffee; he lifts the other hand and gives a gesture somewhere between a salute and a wave. He's back to looking like he's a day past when he should have shaved, and Dom wonders if he's bothered at all since New York. Since he switched back.

"Hey," Dom remembers to say, and then fortunately the lift dings open and they can all pile in.

It literally is just a pop-in-and-sign-something; they get ushered into a spare meeting room where three sets of documents are laid out tabbed with _sign here_ sticky-notes. But word gets around that they're in, and people keep dropping by to just say hello.

Dom has rarely felt less like saying hello. He can't tell how much of it is jetlag and how much is being hyper aware of Matt muttering next to him--at the documents, not at Dom.

It'd be different, if they weren't… whatever they were doing right now. Everything has always been easier with Matt around. Maybe not quite easier. More complicated, often spikier, less expected, less boring. Better.

What happens after this not-meeting? Their schedules are still clear for another month from the original timeline of Matt's--thing. Maybe they're all just going to fuck off and do their own thing for another thirty days. Maybe that would be good. Maybe by the time they get back to business as usual it will be just that: as usual. It's not like it has to be a Bellamy-free zone entirely. The bloody farm isn't so isolated that there isn't phone reception; Dom can usually rely on an endless stream of text messages on entirely random subjects.

Does "usually" still apply right now?

He's on the last page of the document--whatever the fuck it is, something about international imaging rights?--when someone else comes barrelling into the room, all expansive good cheer and buzzwords. Something about his voice sounds familiar, but when Dom looks up he doesn't recognise the guy, so he just goes back to the document. He's distracted now, though; can see Matt's hand, swivelling the pen between his knuckles as he reads a paragraph. Just like that, Dom's thinking about the phone meeting--was that setting out the terms of this document? Shit, probably. He hadn't really been paying attention, of course, because of Matt's hand on him.

"Fuck," Dom mutters, shifting where he's bent over the table and willing his dick to calm the fuck down.

He glances sidelong, and Matt's looking back at him, and then the bloke talking to Chris says something about, "market and mission synergies," and just like that, Dom realises that it was him on the phone, this guy fucking talking while Dom got wanked off in an apartment in New York by his best mate.

Matt's realised it too, Dom can tell just by the quick jerk of his head, looking up at the exec, and the press of his lips, and Dom is horrified, sure, and a bit embarrassed but mostly…

Mostly, it's just fucking hilarious. He might be able to cope with that by himself, but he isn't by himself, Matt's right there beside him, biting his lip with his shoulders shaking. Mirth bubbles up in Dom's throat, and he coughs into his fist, and Matt just starts laughing so hard he has to rest his forehead against the desk. Chris and the exec both pause, look their way, and Dom kicks at Matt's ankle. "Sorry," he says, through his grin. "Inside joke. It's honestly not that funny."

Chris gives that smile, that honest and reassuring and innocent smile of his, and says something about jetlag. He's ushering the guy out the door within thirty seconds. Everyone underestimates Chris.

"Oh my god," Dom mutters, dragging a hand through his hair.

But he feels light-hearted--fucking ebullient--for the first time since--yeah, well. Maybe it's going to be all right. Maybe they can deal with this. Maybe they are grown-ups--for all one of them is still giggling like a teenager as he knots his signature (his real one, tight and curt, not his flamboyant fucking autograph) around the final line of the document.

Chris just looks at them, the way he often does, like they're his favourite fuck-ups, and says, "If you're fucking done, shall we go for--"

"Pub," Matt interrupts, tossing down his pen on top of his finished document.

"Fuck's sake, it's--" Dom has to look up to the clock on the wall of the meeting room; he feels like it's some unholy hour. "Eleven in the morning."

"Pub's open, then," Matt points out, like this is a winning argument.

"Brunch," Dom counters, pointing at him, fighting the urge to grin. "You can get a mimosa like a twat if you must and we can drink coffee like sensible people."

Matt pulls a face like Dom is the worst, and Chris laughs, and Dom feels like he could float back down to street level.

It's going to be fine.

* * *

The mimosas actually look pretty good and Dom could definitely murder a Bloody Mary, but Matt bets him ten pounds he'll be on the booze before midday so clearly Dom has to abstain as a matter of fucking principle. (He retaliates by ordering laverbread and cockles, which sets Matt off on an epic rant and is--bonus--delicious.) They trade stories--about the terrible cover band and the record store and the lunatics they saw in the Park and Matt getting shot down by lesbians thinking he was cruising for a threesome--for news of how Chris's family has been getting on, and there are actually barely any times they have to swerve too hard away from the risque bits.

Matt goes up to the bar to pay the bill and gets chatting with the waitress--possibly about the restaurant's red wine selection, possibly just chatting her _up_ , Dom's money is on both--so Dom and Chris just lounge at the table, finishing their coffee and idly talking shit.

At least, Dom thinks they're just idly talking shit, until Chris casts a calculating glance up at Matt and says, "So, did he just give up on the lesbians and--what? Shag you?" He's laughing. Dom tries to look like the idea is diverting and surprising. Chris stops laughing. "Oh fuck, seriously? I didn't think he--" He stops abruptly; his face is--Dom doesn't even know. Amused, flabberghasted, the face he gets when he's mentally rearranging everything he thought he knew? "I knew that you--" He stops again, waves a hand.

Dom isn't sure what his own face is doing. "You knew that I _what_?"

Chris shrugs. "Had experimented."

Scratch that; Dom's pretty sure he looks astonished, because that's how he feels. He's got off with two blokes in his entire life. How the fuck does Chris know anything?

"I mean," Chris waves that hand again. "That guy in Japan back in the day."

Dom blinks. For a moment he has no idea what Chris is talking about, and then scraps of memory start to coalesce. Right. OK. Three guys in his entire life, then. He clears his throat.

But Chris gets in first. "Not that it matters, of course, because he was a girl--and you were right, kind of a hot one."

"I never said that," Dom protests, completely in vain, because Chris is still talking, on a roll like he gets every now and then.

"What I don't get," he says, "is the whole deal from his angle." He twitches a thumb toward the bar, where the waitress, holding up a bottle of wine, says something and Matt starts cackling. He glances back at the table, and Dom can feel the start of a smile at the corner of his own mouth--an answer, an echo, just how he feels watching Matt laughing like that, like he doesn't care if he's giggling like an idiot because he's so fucking delighted about whatever the fuck it is.

Dom wants to lick that laughter out of his mouth; the desire is so sharp, so crystal clear, that he feels like it must be audible to everyone in the whole damn restaurant.

As though from a distance, he hears Chris say, "Don't get me wrong, you're my best mate, Dom, but I didn't think Bells was into blokes at all."

Dom opens his mouth, hears himself saying, "Yeah well, basically I was just a self-sufficient sex toy," but halfway through the sentence he realises something.

Then Chris is just about shouting, "Oh, god, I'm sorry I brought it up," laughing his arse off, and five seconds later Matt's back at the table saying, "Brought what up?" and Chris says, "American cheese, what the fuck, every time I just can't believe--" and Matt's going on about him and food, and is he even allowed to eat cheese any more on this gym regime.

And Dom absolutely doesn't think about his realisation, not now, not when it's too fucking dangerous.

* * *

It's hard, it keeps creeping into his mind, asking, _What does it mean?_ but Dom is resolute; he waits until he's at home. Sits himself down on his couch, lays his phone on the table, sets a glass of whiskey next to it, and then lets himself face it head on.

Matthew Bellamy used him to get off; it's fine, that's what Dom was signing up for, as much as he really paid attention to it, didn't just grab the chance with both hands.

Except that Matt also jerked Dom off on the couch, nothing in it for him but amusement--which might still be enough. But then the day in the Park, lying on the grass, talking the same old shit as they'd talk any other day--about crazy concert shit they'd never be allowed to do, about how many cats you'd need to pull Santa's sleigh, about the book Matt had found in the apartment that he was reading, something about tectonic plates and the magnetism of the poles--except that every time Dom took a little too long answering, Matt would lean over and kiss him again, lazy swirl of his tongue, faint nip of teeth. Snogging, pure and simple.

Dom doesn't know what it means. Sort of wishes he hadn't thought of it at all because now it's just sitting there, something he has to do something about.

And the answer is obvious: ignore it. Don't do anything. This morning isn't so far away that he's forgotten the knot of anxiety in his stomach, the relief of Matt's laughter beside him, the heady feeling that normal was achievable. Don't fuck it up again, Howard.

It's probably not a thing, anyway. Matt likes snogging, Dom knows that, he's seen enough evidence over the years, and they were just… what, in a zone, in some sort of strange liminal space where things were possible that aren't otherwise. What happens in the genderbend stays in the genderbend.

And yet still Dom finds his phone in his hand, the messaging app pulled up, showing his last conversation with Matt, just nonsense from the afternoon when Matt was at the bar (of course they ended up at a bar) threatening to bring them all back a bottle of sake.

There's a ding, and on the screen it says, _can we talk?_ and for a moment the world stops, Dom's heart stops, and he thinks he's sent it without meaning to. But no, it's a message received. It's from Matt.

Dom sends, _yeah sure_ , because what else can he say? What else is he ever going to say to any question Matt Bellamy asks?

The response dings up when he's still exhaling, reaching for his glass. _I'm outside_

* * *

"Aren't you supposed to be packing to head down to Devon tomorrow?" Dom greets him, which on second thought isn't all that welcoming.

Matt just shrugs. "Haven't really unpacked."

They sort of dither in the hall for a minute, and this time last week, given an opportunity like this, one of them would have had the other up against the wall. It's hard to think past that to what normal used to look like. Harder still for Dom to concentrate past the scent of Matt this close--and he used the same bath products and deodorant throughout, of course he did, but Dom's only just realising that what Matt always smelt like has now become bundled up with a whole lot of other associations for him.

He still has his glass in his hand, though it's empty. Good distraction. "Drink?"

"Yes," Matt says, vehemently.

The kitchen's better; plenty of things for Matt to muck about with. In fact, there's a bowl at the end of the counter that Dom chucks odd keys and foreign currency and bits and bobs into purely so they're there to entertain fidgety twerps, and by the time Dom turns around from the cupboard, extra glass in hand, Matt's turning some sort of octagonal coin around in his fingers.

"Feeling a bit at a loose end," Matt admits, as Dom rattles the lid back off the whiskey. "That went a bit quicker than expected."

"Quicker than last time," Dom says, for something to be saying that isn't what he's thinking, which is how much he'd assumed--hoped--there would be time for them to… come to terms.

"Right."

Dom sloshes whiskey into glasses and slides one across the counter. "Which is good, right? Back to normal?"

"Sure." Matt drops the coin back in the bowl and braces his fingers around the rim of his glass in a way Dom refuses to look at directly for his own sanity. "Not complaining, obviously, nice to be back in familiar surroundings. It's like sleeping in your own bed again, everything is just where it's supposed to be. What it's supposed to be. But maybe there are things that--no. Let me try--Are we--Fuck." Matt shakes his head, looking down at the counter, but Dom can see enough of his profile to know the frustrated twist to his mouth. There's something Matt wants to express and he can't find the right way.

Dom considers how much easier--safer--it might be to help him not say it. "Spit it out," he suggests instead.

"Fuck off," Matt says, like reflex, just punctuation for him. He tilts his head, grimaces, and turns side-on to Dom, leaning back against the counter with his arms folded. Determined. "We need to talk about what happened, obviously we can't just--well, I suppose we could but I don't want to--no, see, this is what I mean, this can't be all about--after all, I dragged you into this."

"You what?" Dom can't help the laughter that limns his words, can never help being amused when Matt gets all rambly, but especially when he rambles nonsense. "What, by getting inexplicably turned into a bird?"

"No," Matt says sharply, looking up.

In the moment when their eyes meet, Matt entirely serious, Dom knows exactly what he means. Matt sitting on the dining table in the apartment in New York, straddling his lap, growling, _Do it_ , in his ear. It's entirely possible, however hard Dom wanted exactly what had happened, that if Matt hadn't pushed, Dom would just have had a lot of showers he'd have hated himself over.

It's been years, after all. He's become pretty bloody good at avoiding the question. Until he can't any more.

Just a moment, and then Matt looks down, leaning back against the counter. "And I do this a lot, I'm a cunt, we all know that, and I just push until you--" He stops abruptly, folding his lips up tight, like he's not best pleased about having said that much.

Dom can feel his eyebrows go up. "What, you think I do things--" _did that_ "--just because it's _you_ asking?"

"No," Matt says, "of course not." But the quickness of his words, the sideways slip of his eyes, every tiny detail about his body language that Dom has a lifetime of fluency in… all of that says, _yes, actually_.

And it bothers him. It bothers him that Dom might have fucked him for a month just to not say no. That if he says anything now, Dom might--what? Let this slip into something _just because_?

Phenomenal, sometimes, the ego on the man. And the neurosis. Though, to be fair, wasn't Dom thinking it himself, before he opened the door to Matt? Thinking that he'd never say anything but yes to anything Matt asked? But not like that, not because he _can't_. "Matt," he says, sliding sideways along the counter until he's leaning against the fridge, directly opposite Matt, "you fucking twat, of course I say yes to you. You're a divinely inspired lunatic genius. You've let me drag you into stupidity all over the world. And--" The most important one, the one Dom has to say, and standing here, seeing the reluctant corner of a smile now tugging at the corner of Matt's mouth, maybe he can actually manage it. "And you make me do things I desperately want to have the courage to do anyway."

Matt looks up, just his eyes and then his whole face, and Dom finds he's breathing a little fast, like he's run a mile instead of his mouth. "Desperately want," Matt repeats, low and quiet. The smile's gone, he's all serious, but something tweaks at his mouth as he adds, "Perks of having tits."

Dom licks his lips, and watches Matt's eyes snag on the movement. This could be really stupid, could be setting them both--all--up for a monumental crash. But he's not sure he could forgive himself for missing this opportunity to be sublimely, gloriously stupid. It feels familiar, with Matt. It feels like home. So he shrugs, and says, as casual as he doesn't feel: "They were all right."

Matt's eyes are bright as lightning as they meet Dom's. The moment hangs between them, and then that corner of a smile is back on Matt's face, blossoming into something sly and cheeky. "You want me," he says, rolling it around his mouth like something even more lewd than it already is, like it's a filthy accusation. "Still."

Dom grins as he says, "Well, yeah."

"Good." The word's still hanging in the air, barely slipped out of Matt's lips, when Dom's back is against the refrigerator, glass clinking inside, and Matt's tongue is in his mouth, a hand fisting in his hair just the same, just the fucking same as New York. Dom's hard so fast it makes him dizzy, clutching at Matt's hips--still fucking perfect in his hands--and arching against him. This time it's hardness and hardness, and both of them groan. Dom's head thunks back against his fridge and Matt bites at his neck; the scrape of stubble has Dom even more turned on, his hips twitching.

"I have no idea what I'm doing," Matt mutters against his throat, and Dom wraps an arm around him, like he can hold him in place, but it doesn't sound like a sudden crisis. A moment later, Matt's saying, "No, really, who does what to who because I don't know about--"

He stops then, possibly because Dom's laughing helplessly, sagging against the fridge. When he has enough breath to speak, he says, "Don't look at me, I've been with three blokes in my entire life."

Matt's eyebrows go up. "What, really? I thought it was just that punk git in Berlin."

Dom stares at him. "Fuck. I'm just going to stop counting."

Matt's turn to dissolve into giggles, and he's right there, bright-eyed and full of delight; so Dom presses him back, nips at his mouth until he's allowed inside, laughter still curling around Matt's tongue. It tastes better than champagne, sharp and effervescent. "Dom," Matt mutters.

Dom tastes that too, and then lines their hips up again, bumping Matt back against his kitchen counter, to suck the moan off his bottom lip. "What do you want?" he demands, and barely recognises the timbre of his own voice.

"To get you off," Matt gasps, so quick, so eager to please, the idea right on the tip of his tongue. "Me," he repeats, with savage emphasis, tilting his hips against Dom's.

Dom's turn to moan, and he considers just getting their trousers open right there, getting both of their dicks in hand and jerking them off together in his fucking kitchen because he doesn't want to wait another second to see Matt making that face, to feel him come apart.

Except…

He drags his mouth away from Matt's, gets entirely distracted by the stubble shadow on his jaw, by the way he shifts when Dom sucks at his earlobe. Finally manages to say, "I have wondered for fucking years what your dick tastes like. I bet it's just as sweet as your cunt was."

He feels the twitch in Matt's body, the press of his fingers against Dom's neck, the sharp draw of his breath. "Well," Matt says, with the cobbled-together equanimity of a first-class frontman, "seems like enough to be going on with."

And he yanks Dom towards the bedroom.

* * *

Everyone's genitals are still in the usual configuration when they wake up the next morning. They check thoroughly, just to make sure.


End file.
